NEED FOR AN UNDERSTANDING

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 56, 8 March 1922, Page 7

NEED FOR AN UNDERSTANDING

(FROM OUR OWN CORRIBPONDBNT.)

LONDON, 10th January. ''Problems of the Pacific" was made the subject of Sir H. Mackinder's paper at a meeting of the Geographical Association. He said everyone knew that there were many islands in the Pacific, but few had any conception of their extraordinary potentialities. Jav» had a population, of some 37,000,000 or 38,000,----000. It was practically as densely inhabited as Great Britain, and the whole of the population was based on tropical agriculture. If the neighbouring islands were as thickly populated—and there was no reason why they should not be— the region from Sumatra to New Guinea would carry 400,000,000 people, which would exceed the population of the world, while Australia and New Zealand might support a white population of fifty or one hundred million people. Borneo was booty of the first orrter; Australia, New Zealand, and Japan were bases for naval action of the. greatest significat'on. In the range of coast line of the Pacific, there were great deposits of coal an;! metals and every kind of vegetable product Human, nature being what it was, they could visualise the competition for these markets. Though so great a proportion of the British possessions surrounded the Indian Ocean, ifc had ncl- Veen necessary to maintain a great (leel there, because no part of the coast line was held against us by a great Power or Powers. We could not dnmix'arr- the Pacific in the same easy' way, and it/ was of enormous importance that them should be an understanding between the English-speaking races. It wis not the part of geographers to be the propagandists of particular solutions of problems, but they ought to present the facts relating to such problems.